“You’re on to something there,” Billings replied quietly. A feverish glow filled his eyes. “But how did you get back to this country?”
“They tortured me, got everything I knew and then some – all the horrors of this ongoing war. Then, when they knew they had everything out of me, they tortured me to death.”
“But you didn’t die?”
“I didn’t. It was a trick I’d learned those thirteen years in the rape rooms. I could stop my breathing. Let them walk away thinking they’d done it. But then I’d wake up again twenty minutes later.”
“In Iraq they called you Lazarus.”
“Yeah. Lazarus. Except in Gitmo, they didn’t know that. You lie still long enough in all that blood, getting cold on the floor, not breathing whenever they’re looking, not responding whenever they kick – soon enough they think you’re really and truly dead. They bodybagged me, figured they’d hide the murder of one of their own by saying I was found on a roadside in the Triangle of Death, stuck me on a Hercules cargo plane, and sent me back with a hundred other corpses to some base south of the border.
“The thing was, I wasn’t a corpse. I slipped out of my bag, dressed in some airman’s clothes, and helped the crew offload bodies. Then, I just disappeared, and sneaked into America.”
“It’s perfect. The government wiped all your records. Disavowed. You don’t have to create false records because when the government wants you not to exist – man, you don’t exist. The very fact that there is no evidence of your existence is evidence of the very story you’re telling! And then coming in illegal from Mexico
– that’s the new American Dream. You’re an archetype, Mr Doe. Jesus Christ, you are an angel,” said Billings with a brutal laugh.
“I was,” I responded ruefully. My interest in this game was flagging. It was the opposite of what I had been doing. Instead of assuring truth, I was creating a lie. “Look, wouldn’t it be better to tell the truth? Most Americans believe in God. Many of those also believe in Jesus-”
“Steer clear of saying you’re Jesus-”
“Not Jesus, but like Jesus, divinity in the flesh.”
“Forget it. That defense failed Manson.”
“Yes, right,” I replied. “A defense. That’s what I want.”
Billings nodded to himself and tugged on his upper lip. “Back to your story. It’s a huge lie, but that makes it perfect. The bigger the lie, the easier it is to believe. C’mon. I used to work for Halliburton! Look at the fucking war in Iraq. No justification. A huge lie, but a lot of money. And yet after all the evidence, people still want to believe.”
“I don’t want to live a lie.”
“You’re still not finished. You still have to make it clear why you killed people. Why you cut off their heads and hands. You’ve got to explain all this press about you thinking you’re an angel. People will say,
‘He’s just another crazy Midwest monster – another Dahmer or Gein or Gacy.’ You’re a killer, yeah – they got your prints and all – but you’ve got to convince them you’re a killer with a heart of gold.”
“Can we stop?”
“Let’s think about the symbolism of heads and hands. Heads are identity. They’re control. They’re government. Okay?”
Resignedly, I said, “Okay.”
“And hands. They’re the doers, the tools of the head. Okay?”
“Whatever.”
“So, it’s George HW who sent you to war – the head. And Saddam Hussein who wanted you tortured all those years – the head. And George W who wanted you tortured again – the head. When you cut off a head, you’re killing the part that killed you. Then, there are the hands – the folks who thrust you into battle, that dragged you into a rape room, that carried you into a secret prison. Without hands, the heads can do nothing.”
“Yeah.”
“So, your victims – the ones they can tie you to – they had committed atrocities with their hands and heads, and you were stopping them, like you couldn’t stop the real monsters.” He turned to me and smiled cunningly. “Do you see what we’ve done here, John?
We’ve given you not just a past, but an honest-togoodness defense.”
I nodded, unnerved. I couldn’t tell whether Billings had taken hold of the lie or it had taken hold of him.
“The press will love it. Your trial won’t be in the courts but in the media. You’re a blogger’s dream. We just need to plant a few false leads, make some implications – let your attorney discover all this stuff and grill you about it, so that it all seems to come from outside. Keep up with this business of being a fallen angel. They’ll say that’s the only way you could deal with the stress of your situation – to believe you could not be killed and your body was not really yours, only a ghostform. “And the business about killing twenty thousand people over fifteen years, that’s great Biblical material. It’d be even better if you could remember forty thousand. Forty is always a good, holy number. Maybe some reporter will even suggest that’s how many deaths you suffered at the hands of the Iraqis. Jesus, but I’m brilliant,” Billings concluded, gazing speculatively at the metal bunk above his head. “It’s just lucky for the world that all I ever wanted to do was get rich, not kill.”
I rose. My legs were numb from sitting, and my mind from the fantasy. “Yes, Derek. Thank you for humoring me.” I climbed up into my bunk.
“Humoring you?” he said. “I’m serious about this. You don’t have to do a thing, just plant the seeds and watch how fast a forest of falsehood grows up to protect you. See, they aren’t so mad about the killings; they’re just mad that you won’t even hint at why you did it. Give them the slightest hint of an explanation, and they’ll make an innocent lamb out of you.”
I looked to the high, barred window, beyond the catwalk of our cell block. “Good night.”
“You think I’m kidding. I’ll show you I’m serious. Tomorrow, my wife is going to visit-”
“Good night.”
He had only been trying to help, but lies would not save me. I’d never learned their nuances, never needed to spin them. Only God could save me now, whisking me away from this corporeal hell. And if God would not save me, I would cling to the truth. It was all I had left of my angelic past.
Not all. As I lay there, calmly breathing the bluetinted air, an old, familiar intuition came to me. Derek Billings’s time was coming. His life would soon be up. He was to die in two weeks, just before his trial would begin.
If I arranged his passing, made it a fitting and final end, perhaps God would take me back.
Of course Derek was to die. He was the second human being I had latched on to after Donna. Killing him would be very difficult for me. Killing him would prove that my unhealthy bond with humans was at an end, that I could still slay efficiently and dispassionately when the time called for it. If I killed Derek Billings, God just might take me back.
As he lay there on the bunk below mine, palpable in the still darkness, I could feel his mind churning the permutations of the salvation he planned for me. Meanwhile, I imagined him dying in a thousand ways
– poisoned food, a knife in the back, a penny stuck in his throat; yes, that last would work well, poetic justice for the embezzler of electronic money to choke on real money – on the slightest amount of real money. The final touch, though, was to have a trusted comrade ram that coin in place.
That was where I would come in.
TWELVE
It had taken a week for Leland to wrap up her duties as a cop and another week to prepare for her duties beside Azra. This phone call would finish the job.